Read this before you buy another hard drive

Data storage service provider Backblaze yesterday revealed failure rates among more than 27,000 consumer-class hard drives it uses in its data center.

The breadth and depth of Backblaze's data has given consumers unprecedented access to specific hard drive failure rates across the three largest vendors of the technology: Seagate, Hitachi and Western Digital. It offers an unvarnished look at hard drives (models and serial numbers included), and even details which drives Backblaze will no longer use because they're so unreliable.

While users should check out the actual data for more granular information, the big picture boils down to this: Over a three-year period, 3.1% of Hitachi's drives failed; 5.2% of Western Digital's drives died; and a sizable 26.5% of Seagate's drives failed. "Hitachi does really well," Backblaze said in its blog. "There is an initial die-off of Western Digital drives, and then they are nice and stable. The Seagate drives start strong, but die off at a consistently higher rate, with a burst of deaths near the 20-month mark."